Saturday, March 13, 2010

...And Justice for Some...

(Tip o' the tinhoil hat to readers Comrade Rutherford and Cossak for heads ups on the newest Turner non-verdicts.)

America is a strange nation of some very disturbing contradictions. Our government says it cannot afford to insure all 48,000,000 Americans who don't have health care despite a Senate HCR bill costing well over $800 billion while waging two wars overseas and bloating the military industrial complex more effectively than even the Bush administration while simultaneously bailing out Wall Street to the tune of tens of trillions and more or less patiently waiting forever and a day to have that money repaid while said bailed-out executives continue using that money to lavishly reward themselves for their sociopathic failures.

We vote 40,000,000 times a week for our next American Idol yet 60% of us, on a good year, can't heave our Twinkie-distended rear ends off our couches every 24 months to drive down the street to vote for our choice of Congressman or Senator or President or on important referendums.

Yet the criminal justice system, touted as the best in the world, is perhaps the worst offender when it comes to consistency and equality. Consider the ongoing case of the bozo of North Bergan, NJ, Hal Turner.

The waddling wad o' fuck won a second mistrial when jurors, after deliberating for two hours, couldn't reach a unanimous verdict as to whether Turner broke the law when he threatened the lives of three federal judges in Chicago for upholding a gun control ban. And not only did Turner threaten their lives, he even "posted addresses, photos, maps and other identifying information about Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook and Judges Richard Posner and William Bauer."

Turner's defense is one of the most laughable on record or it would be were all of it untrue: "I didn't really mean it because I was paid $100,000 by the FBI to post fiery rhetoric and to flush out the real bad guys."

And visions of the Boston FBI, Whitey Bulger and Steve "The Rifleman" Flemmi danced in our heads. Because the FBI's New Jersey field offices have yet to decry the allegations. Turner's first mistrial arose from evidence being dismissed because of the DOJ's supposed mishandling of the case. Yet one wonders if the FBI's true extent of involvement with Turner, a long-noted white supremacist, and the fallout from such a level of involvement is what artificially hamstrung the Justice Department.

Meanwhile, right across the river from New Jersey, two little girls aged 12 and 13 had been arrested for doodling on their desks and 25 other middle school children, one as young as 11, were arrested for having a food fight. A little over a week ago, Bob Herbert of the New York Times wrote another searing article indicting the NYPD for arresting two more children for, you guessed it, writing on their desks.

Herbert went on to say that, just over two years ago, a five year-old child was apprehended in Queens for being unruly and sent to a psychiatric hospital. Sadly, this wasn't the first time that Herbert had to write about a similarly-aged child being arrested and put in handcuffs.

Granted, the cases in the draconian New York City school districts and Hal Turner's are vastly different. yet the most glaring difference of all to even the most casual observer is that children as young as five and six have been scarred for life by being arrested and institutionalized for typical juvenile behavior while Hal Turner today remains a free man for engaging in juvenile behavior that could have gotten several federal officials killed.

Among the federal and state officials whose lives were potentially endangered by Turner's "manufactured" rhetoric while the FBI uneasily but passively stood by and did nothing until he couldn't be ignored anymore:

Witnesses saw him beat a Hispanic man senseless at a white power rally, proving that Turner is ready, willing and able to cross the line beyond mere hate rhetoric. Thirteen months ago, the piece of shit also threatened to send skinheads and neonazis to my home, thereby threatening both me and my family at the time, including my small grandson (his protestations to the contrary falling on deaf ears- If he did send thugs to my home, how could he possibly control their actions all the way from North Bergen, NJ?).

Yet in three years or less, my grandson will be eligible to be arrested and/or institutionalized the minute he threatens to act up because certain people expect even kindergarten-aged toddlers to act like miniature adults while lazy, SAW-esque psychopaths like Hal Turner are allowed to roam free after endangering some of our nation's most important federal officials.

Yes, there is something very, very wrong with this country, starting with our own criminal justice system.

Turner's old website is now largely defunct, having been thoroughly scrubbed of most anything incriminating and potentially violent (explaining why 99% of his old blog has been purged).

Anticipating this kind of self-censorship, I had the foresight to have screengrabs taken of one of his more incendiary posts by one of my readers just to remind ourselves and others of what this man is really all about and that he is not, as he ludicrously claims, a mere rabble-rouser for the FBI. It's abundantly obvious that this fat freak who goes by the name of Hal Turner used the FBI as a magic cloak of legal invulerability so he could continue pursuing his hate-filled agenda against anyone who doesn't perfectly subscribe to his narrow, right wing world view.